Friday, October 12, 2012

Another Way The Jobs Number is Getting Cooked

An EPJ reader emails:
We are a small business located in Denver, CO, who have a loan from the Economic Development council of the County/City of Denver.  I would never have voted for such a bureau or to take taxpayer money to give to businesses, but the money was there and it was cheap (3% interest rate), so we took it.  As with all government programs, there is a ton of red tape and I'd probably never go down this road again, as it's a hassle on so many different levels.  But what is relevant to what's-in-the-news regarding job numbers is the job requirements clause of the loan.  We had to hire 6 full-time people within 2 years of the origination of the loan.  We told our contact that was going to be tough to fulfill, but our contact assured us "we'll help you with it."  Without going into too many details, anybody we hired, even on a freelance/subcontractor basis, counted towards this requirement.  Heck, we hired freelance people all the time, so this was easy.  They even let us hire ourselves!

In the past few weeks, when we were 1 hire short, my contact called and told me, "We never had this conversation, but just make up a name and send it in, nobody will check.  But we need this done quickly (by this past week)."

Again, we are a small business and this is only 6 jobs, but I get the feeling ours was just the tip of the iceberg and just another example of how numbers are skewed for political purposes

1 comment:

  1. Unfortunately, cognitive dissonance will prevent the majority of Americans from wanting government dismantled. You can give your fellow citizens a limitless number of examples of government lies and incompetence (wait, they DO have a limitless number of examples of this!) and they will still say "we need the government to regulate the market."

    Of course, those people who get it are already Ron Paul supporters.

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